Amazing Email Newsletters

With all the clutter that hits the average inbox daily, you already KNOW that you’ve got to have something glorious that stands out from the crowd! Cutting through the noise and getting your email newsletters not only seen – but also responded to – is not only important, it’s currently one of the best tools you can use today to turn those warm leads into closed sales. Our AMAZING Email Newsletter Course will ensure that your email newsletters get opened – and GET RESULTS!

The Best Darn Free Email Marketing Course EVER!

If you are using email marketing to promote your business, you need to be sure that you are maximizing your efforts. This course walks you through all the of the aspects of email markeitng including getting started, developing your content, writing a sales page, setting up your campaign, getting the bugs out, free offers to build your list, and finally our top email marketing tips. This is all of our best email marketing strategies in easy bite sized bites!

100 Free Marketing Ideas

This is the fourth annual 100 Free Marketing Ideas sheet, with a twist. When we took a look at what had changed over the last couple of years we realized that we needed to update the ideas from the ground up!

This amazing resource contains everything from internet marketing to social media to offine marketing ideas. Make sure you pick just a few and get going today!

The Twitter Cheat Sheet

Because we use Twitter so often (and effectively), we took a bunch of time to figure out some things about which tweets catch the eye and how to attract more attention to our tweets. Some of them were obvious (have great info) and some more obscure, like that people tend to respond more when using the word “you” because they are alone when they read tweets. We keep this cheat sheet right beside us on our desk when we are tweeting so that we can post the most powerful messages possible.

The Twitter Tweet Generator

Up until recently I used the TweetAdder tweet generator tool to make a variety of tweets that I could use to marketing on Twitter. With the recent changes, they deleted that function, but luckily I have a geeky husband who made me this AMAZING Tweet Generator!

Have you ever scratched your head and wondered how the heck everyone else knows about social media marketing when you are just struggling to keep up with the latest trends. And forget marketing, you are just flailing around hoping that one of your posts will “go viral” and make all this hard work worth it.

Stop right now! Social media marketing involves strategy and you CAN learn how to make the social sites work for your business.

We have put together a course that will help you to understand HOW social works, WHY it is so important to your business and WHAT you should do to make the most of your time.

What this social media marketing FREE email course is not:

A how to set up your sites…you can get that on YouTube

A lame-o fluff piece…it is pure content that will help you figure out Social Media once and for all

This is not for using social media, well, socially…all emails and videos will show you how to use social to market your business

When you take this course you will get advanced marketing marketing concepts that marketing pros usually charge between three hundred and three THOUSAND dollars for!

How it works

Every other day you will get an email with another aspect of social media marketing. We stagger them so that you will have time to do a little work on each property before going to the next one!

What the course covers:

Why Social Media Is Important

B2B or B2C

Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

YouTube

LinkedIn

Website Integration

Drive To Email List

Sign Up Now!

we respect your privacy and never sell our list…please don’t forget to confirm your email address so you can start the course! (it can take a few minutes to come in and you might need to check your spam folder!)

In my top 10 Internet Tools post I talked about learning to use You Tube for your small business – this one is HUGE!!! AND I mis-spoke, I don’t want you to just use You Tube, I want you to use VIDEO on your blog, on your website, in your newsletters, basically anywhere you connect with your people!!!

So if you have NEVER used video, how do you get started (do not worry video junkies, more for you later)! I have found two easy ways to create video for my blogs and newsletters:

1. Using a Flip Video Camera for small business marketing videos – Why a Flip camera?

Because it is plug and play AND comes with its own software that works on a Mac or a PC

Because it is easy to operate – push one button to start, push one button to stop

Because it makes videos you can take directly from your computer and upload to YouTube!

If you are just starting out, buy this camera! I have SO many small business owners who email me and ask how to use their fancy digital video camera (because they got talked into upgrading at the store) because they can’t operate it. I use a flip or my iPhone to shoot videos and have NO IDEA how to manage a fancy schmancy video camera.

For the last two years I have been using the $15 a year version of Jing to make my screen capture videos. If you are not going to be doing professional quality work (and I think most people are wary of professional quality work right off the bat), then use the Jing! It is SUPER easy to use and allows you provide information to people who follow your message.

So what can you use video for? Here are some ideas off the top of my head!!!

Do a powerpoint and use jing to screen capture your analysis of the content (DO NOT just read the slides)

Use your flip to document someone using your product

For realtors – do a video tour of the house in addition to your virtual tour, show all the things that the owners liked about it OR film the current owners telling the great things about living there

For retail store owners – film one of your favorite (and lucrative) products and include a link to how someone can buy it

For non-profits – film an event where you help people by utilizing contributions

For internet marketers – show how easy it is to use your product (or your affiliate product), show them how you use it in YOUR business and why you recommend it!!!

Make sure to check out eyejot.com for sending video emails (if you want to learn more about eyejot I wrote a post a while back…:)

If you have a business that doesn’t fit these ideas, make a comment and I will give you some more!!!

the link to the flip camera is an affiliate link – if you would like to purchase one of those without using my link, search for flip at your favorite online retailer…:)

One thing most small business marketers avoid learning is how to make hyperlinks into your blog comments, facebook pages or anywhere else they are most beneficial. I am not sure why this is so intimidating but we are here to fix this!

Hyperlinks are the words that you use to link BACK to your website. They help to tell google and the other seach engines what you site is about. Many small business owners use their company name to link to their website rather than keywords that would be beneficial to their website or blog.

Instead of linking â€œMarketing Artfullyâ€, I link â€œsmall business marketingâ€. For realtor marketing it is better to link â€œdunedin real estateâ€ than to link â€œDeborah Wardâ€. Make sure you know your keywords and link those instead of your website address or name!!

I can almost guarantee that you rank in the first couple of positions for your company or personal name â€“ it is not hard to rank for this as almost no one else is competing for that!

Here is the code to use to write a hyperlink OR use the editor in your blog, website or even MS Word and paste it in…

This is not a â€œhow to use social networkingâ€ post. It is more a why social networking can help your small business and how you can set up systems that will allow you to use it the right way â€“ not as a stand alone marketing magic pill but as a stable part of your small business marketing plan.

What Kind of Effort Will You Have To Make For Your Social Networking Marketing Success

If you are looking for a get rich quick scheme to do 5 minutes of social networking a week and getting major benefits, you are going to be disappointed. That having been said, it doesn’t take much time to get your social networking set up and then minimal time a day to keep it going.

It should take you about 4 hours to set up Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter plus your other programs that make using them easy. There are some tricks that make a real difference but mostly you need to make sure you:

Pick a hub to drive everything to! I drive people back here to Marketing Artfully from Facebook but send people from LinkedIn and Twitter to my Facebook page sometimes instead of right to my site

Include a link to your website, blog or whatever you are using as your Hub to send all of your people to

Fill out anything they ask you to â€“ many times they use the information in past jobs and volunteer activities to find connections for you

Remember to use a call to action that benefits your readers like â€œcheck out our information to help you..â€ or â€œfind out more about making the most of your..â€

DO NOT try to overtly sell on Social Networking sites, do that by driving people to your home page and then sell there

I offer a social networking how to video series that will help you get up and running fast if you like to do it yourself. NOTE: We offer lifetime updates and will be raising the price to $47 starting January 1st so if you think you are intested in it, please buy now before the price increase â€“ you will get all the new videos too!

What Kinds of Leads Can You Expect To Get

Social networking leads are strong leads! They are from people who have some kind of relationship with you, not just people who stumbled upon your website and filled out a contact us form. Some leads that I got recently are:

Digital Pickle â€“ a digital conversion for photos and vhs tapes company to set up their social networking

A social networking class attendee who found me through Facebook

Blog prospects and LOTS of website hits from twitter!

If you have any great recent social networking success stories, please make sure to leave them in the comments!

What Tools Should You Use To Make Social Networking Easy

The two primary tools that I use to make my social networking easier are Twitterfeed and Hootsuite. These two tools allow me to spend about 15 minutes a day and get great results.

How to use email for marketing is simple. It is not easy but the benefits you get FAR outweigh the time it takes to become proficient! In Learn Use the Top 10 Internet Tools for Small Business, I talked about 10 things that I thought were super vital for your internet success. Here you will find out about how to make the most of email marketing.

For each of these items I am going to start with advanced ideas and work back to beginner basics. The reason for this is that there is A LOT of information out there about basic email marketing and I have found that if I tell my readers hard concepts they get them (after a while..:)

EMAIL MARKETING – THE MONEY IS IN THE LIST

When you have a list of people who have agreed to receive emails from you, you hold great responsibility. They have said that you can take their time in exchange for providing them with good information.

What software should you use for keeping track of your lists?

Email Marketing Software Programs â€“ If you have over about 250 people in your database I highly recommend that you start having your people in a â€œrealâ€ email program.

Aweber â€“ This is the one that I recommend to all my non-realtor clients considering starting with a “real” email marketing program. Aweber has great email and autoresponder capabilities, meaning that if you are targeting different types of prospects you can do it from one place. The one drawback is that you cannot manually add people individually after your initial upload so be careful if you are wanting to use this as a general contact database (you can have them signup via a web form). Sign up for their FREE trial and see if it will work for you.

Constant Contact â€“ This is a friendly email program that is great for beginners but it really makes me mad that they do not have multiple autoresponders so you can not target multiple types of clients (although you can set up multiple types of lists). That being said, it is SUPER easy to use and has really pretty email newsletter templates if you have only one type of client.

Brokers Helper â€“ BEST Email marketing program for Realtors with lots of templates and ease of use. They have a FREE trial also!

My Red Tools – Brokers Helper program for KW Realtors (you get a little discount) They have a FREE trial also!

Almost every small business owner I speak with wants to know what database they can use for everything. Their shopping cart and email marketing and direct mail and the list goes on and on. I wish that there was one UBER program that could handle all of these things well that was affordable for everyone but I have yet to find it. Once you know that you will be managing multiple lists you can get to the business of marketing and stop complaining about how hard it is!

Here are some things you can do to monetize your emails:

Send out information about your product or service. This can be done in a non-spammy way by providing great information and then adding a link to find out more about your offering. This is number one because generally your highest ROI is from selling your own products or service. For example – a garage door guy could send out an email about how to winterize your garage door and then put a link to his page or post that offers that service on a paid basis.

Send out emails with affiliate offers in them. This requires that you sign up to be an affiliate with a company or to have a referral agreement with a partner. Almost any business has affiliate programs that are relevant to them and it is easier than ever to get information about available offers. I like to use www.offervault.com to find great offers easily.

Email information about your industry. This is the most passive kind of email as there is no call to action to buy anything. That having been said, Lori Crawford of Trinity Eastlake Real Estate gets a lead almost every time she sends out a newsletter about local real estate information to her list. You would be surprised at how just contacting your list on a regular basis will get you more business!

ADVANCED EMAIL MARKETING

So now you have a regular email marketing program set up..what’s next? Autoresponders! Autoresponders work by sending out a series of emails once someone has signed up for your email list online. All of the email marketing software programs that I recommended you use have some sort of autoresponder built in.

Top Autoresponder Mistakes – Here is my take on the top autoresponder mistakes people make once they get people on their list

Sending out too many messages – I KNOW, everyone says you should send out messages to your list daily or at the very least weekly. I think that people can get overwhelmed when you send out too many messages and that the impact can get diluted. I like to send out two messages a month and have had great feedback on that amount.

Numbering their messages – I have one list I am signed up to that tells me I am on message number 235, etc. I think that they did it for ease of use in setting up their autoresponder series BUT it just reminds me that they have sent me LOTS of messages.

Not adding their blog posts to their autoresponder series. I know that I am a prime offender for this one. DO NOT assume that everyone who signs up for your lists reads your blog posts regularly. This is a great place to get extra content for your autoresponders.

This post is a part of my ongoing posts Top 10 Internet Tools! If you would like to learn more please visit…

In my last post Learn Use the Top 10 Internet Tools for Small Business, I talked about 10 things that I thought were super vital for your internet success. Here you will find out about writing great headlines for email, blog posts, article and website marketing. Get the dos and do nots for all your headline writing!

HOT TIP FOR HEADLINE HELP!
One of the recent resources that I found helpful for writing great headlines was Master Wordsmith (which offers a FREE 7 part email course on how to write an effective sales letter). Good stuff there! PS – I also ordered the $9.95 Ebook and it was WELL worth the price! It has great ideas for headlines, copy and ads.

WRITING GREAT EMAIL HEADLINES

I personally think that a great headline is one that compels me to read an article or open an email. That having been said, there are a number of different reasons for writing blog posts or emails so be careful to know your motivation up front!

Great Headlines for Emails – DO NOTs

I have found that fantasmagoric headlines like “make a million dollars today” or get “5,000 twitter followers in a minute” make me think something is up and hit delete without even opening them

If your email vendor doesn’t allow you to write individual headlines and every time you send something out it says “a message from…”, get a new vendor! I do not have time to click your email to find out if it might be something I might find interesting and neither does anyone else. I recommend AWeber for my clients AND they have a FREE trial!

Great Headlines for Emails – DOs

I track my emails to see which have the best open rates and the ones that do the best are honest about what the content is (duh) because if someone happens to be interested in that topic right then they will open it and read it!

This was my highest open headline “My BEST Email Newsletter Marketing Tips EVER!” Now I spent A LOT of time writing that email because I wanted to be truthful, and I don’t often claim to be sending my best stuff out so it was a compelling offer to my readers.

Know your audience! If I was marketing soap, then the best email newsletter tips headline would have flopped. Make sure your topic is relevant to your list.

You can be MUCH more creative with your email headlines because they are not intended to be seen by search engines.

Bonus tip – Once you have sent your email newsletter to your list, make sure you post it to your blog a couple of weeks or months later. Because this is unique content that has not been posted on the internet yet, it is silly not to get it out there!

WRITING GREAT BLOG POST, WEB PAGE AND ARTICLE HEADLINES

Writing great headlines for the internet is different than writing great headlines for humans. When you are writing headlines to be published on the internet, you need to make sure that they are words that the search engines can index and then direct other people to.

Great Headlines for Blog Posts, Pages and Articles – DO NOTs

Search engines do not have funny bones so cute headlines won’t work, neither will plays on words or catchy phrases. When I started blogging I used to write headlines like “what is the difference” which did NOTHING for increasing my SEO because there was nothing there to index. It was a GREAT post but no one got to see it because the title was bad.

Don’t make stupid claims in your blog post or article headlines. If you do get something indexed and then no humans will read it because the title is obviously bogus (like lose 35 pounds in 2 minutes) then what have you gained?

Great Headlines for Blog Posts, Pages and Articles – DOs

Do KNOW YOUR KEYWORDS – can you tell I am yelling? Each post, page or article should have separate keywords intended to rank well in the search engines. This post is intended to rank well for “writing great headlines” and should do that within a couple of days. You should have multiple levels of keywords you are targeting (overall blog, individual channel, parts of the channel) and use them when writing headlines. If you do not know your keywords we have a keyword analysis report that you can get over at www.websiteandblogdesign.com!

My top post this year (view-wise) is Twitter Tools â€“ How To Use Twitter Effectively! with almost 300 page views over a one month period right after it was written. It ranked well in numerous places because “twitter tools” is a hot topic with everyone right now. Find things of interest to your audience and write about them!

Notice in the last one there was a one month period I talked about? Very few of your blog posts or articles are going to be “evergreen” – meaning that they will rank well forever. Make sure to write multiple articles and posts that have similar titles when you find something that ranks well.

Here is a link to the Top 100 Headlines of All Time from Jay Abraham – use it when you are stuck for a great headline. BUT make sure that you SEO it in addition to using the “CUTE” version. You could use WHO ELSE WANTS A SCREEN STAR FIGURE? if you added “lose weight the easy way” after it!

I feel strongly about this – you should learn how to use the Top Ten internet tools that will make a difference for your small business! These are in no order and come from the talks that I give and questions I am asked by small business owners on a daily basis.

I do not know about you but I sometimes procrastinate about learning how to do something new. I assume that it will be really hard and will take forever to learn and that it will possibly make my head explode. I have to say that most of the time, I am wrong!

That having been said, figure out what makes the most sense to set up yourself and what you can farm out. I had a little problem with Widgets on this blog. Figuring out how to fix it was going to take A LONG TIME and it was something that doesn’t happen a lot – I had a programmer do it so that I could keep working on my actual work. Throughout this post I will give my take on whether learning how to set up some of these things is worth it or if you should get help.

TOP TEN INTERNET TOOLS FOR SMALL BUSINESS

Learn about writing great headlines – Whether you are writing an email or a blog post, you need to know how to make a reader take notice AND how to make it search engine friendly! This post started out about “learning internet things – arggg” and morphed into a topic that you were interested enough in ready to click through to AND it has keywords that the internet can index rather than a “cute” title.

Learn how to use email for marketing – I have an email list that I contact twice a month. They are a great gang of people who look to me to be a source of marketing information and many have purchased something from me at some time. I don’t sell sell sell BUT when I find something that I think works I make sure to let them know. If you are going to have one list only I suggest using Constant Contact, if you are going to have multiple types of email subscribers make sure to use a fuller service like AWeber. If you are technologically or administratively challenged, have someone set up your list for you and import or data entry your contacts. It cost me about $100 / month to have someone data entry my new contacts and it is SO worth it!

Learn how to use Social Networking! – I have to say that I have had more success getting business from Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter from anywhere other than speaking to groups. Just this week I “met” a lady who is attending one of my speaking sessions next month and also got a social networking setup gig from a LinkedIn contact. I would NEVER have met these people in real life so having these FREE marketing tools is brilliant! I offer a social networking how to video series that will help you get up and running fast if you like to do it yourself. If you would like to have everything done for you and ready to go we do a $250 social networking setup that makes getting started effortless!

Learn to make hyperlinks! This one is HUGE and is the question I am asked most about during my classes. As you see above I link to my offers using keywords like “social networking how to video series”. That lets google know what the page I am linking to is about. I do this this also when I comment on a blog post. This one is SO easy once you know how – just use this code <a href=”http://yourlink.com”>Keywords go here</a>.

Learn to make YouTube Videos – Get yourself a Flip Camera and start taking movies. The reason why I recommend the flip is because it is so easy to use. Press one button to start, same button to stop, then plug into your computer and upload to YouTube! This one is VITAL and SO EASY, there are tons of videos on YouTube about how to do it and it will take you less than 10 minutes to learn!

Get a blog - This could be numbers 6-10 it is SO important!!! Many small business owners think that a website is the way to go without understanding the power that having a blog brings. Blogs PUSH your message out to google as soon as you publish it. Blogs are easy to use so you can pop your videos into a post and hit publish. You can put each blog post on facebook or digg or twitter. Blogs are easy to change. Blogs rock! If you would like to find out more about small business blogs visit our website http://websiteandblogdesign.com.

Learn to use the filters on your email program - DO NOT unsubscribe or send nasty messages back when someone sends you an email. That is a potential customer that you are eliminating from your business. Instead set up a filter to send them to a “special folder” or even the trash automatically. Learning to use your email better will eliminate your aggravation and reduce the amount of time you spend.

Sign up for google alerts – Google alerts will send you a daily message with all the information about your industry or topic. Realtors, ask for alerts about your area + real estate. Small business owners use your industry. THEN take the information that you find interesting and write blog posts about it OR just post the link on your Facebook business page. This is a GREAT way to become an expert in your industry!

Sign up for i-google – This is a way that you can use your google homepage to see blog posts by your favorite writers. I did a video explaining how to use the google reader. This one will take you less than 5 minutes to set up! Then you see what people are talking about in your industry and can make comments with text links back to your website or blog!

STOP PROCRASTINATING! If you don’t know how to do something important, learn how to do it. Pay for training, hire someone to set it up for you or figure it out! You will be amazed at how some of these tools can change your business and life if you learn to use them right!

So you know I like make sure my realtors and small business owners know the latest and greatest marketing information so that you can take over and dominate your market! Well today’s topic is Google Voice!

I signed up for Google Voice a few weeks ago and got the notification the other day that I was in…YAY! The thing that I like the best about this is that they provide you with a local number to use on your marketing materials BUT you can also forward your messages from your cell phone to google voice, they transcribe it and record it and then text or email you with the message. You can also text right from the comfort of your desk chair.

The setup is super easy and only took me about 5 minutes to get up and running. The best part for me is that I was paying for this service with another company and now get it for FREE!

So I have been talking A LOT about free marketing tools lately since I think this is the best way to “pad” your marketing budget. Make sure you pay for things that matter and get great free tools where available!

Here are three of my favorite free tools!

Free Marketing Tool #1 – Google Local Search Listing

Google Local Free Tool Screen Shot

If you are a local business with a BUSINESS address, there is nothing more powerful than making sure that your property is listed in google’s local search. I did a search for denver mary kay sales people and Â the ones that have registered with google come up front and center.

Think about that – 3 Mary Kay people are being highlighted in the ENTIRE Denver Metro area. They are not struggling to get people to notice them, we can guess that they get incoming calls asking about their services!

Free Marketing Tool #2 – Eyejot Emails

We love Brian P. Forrester of TriCounty Mortgage, he gets the fact that he has to do marketing and that he should be paying us to help so that he can write loans. BUT I have to say that I respond the most to his FABULOUS eyejot.com videos!

When he sends out his video messages about realtor information he is accomplishing NUMEROUS things! He is giving valuable information to his clients. They may share it with potential realtor prospects (Brian, start suggesting sharing at the end), he is establishing himself as an expert in the area that he talks about AND he is training his people to expect regular communications from him (Brian, send these out weekly!).

While Brian pays a couple of bucks to have his eyejots branded, you can get started with the free ones right out of the box!

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Free Marketing Tool #3 – Jing Project

I use www.jingproject.com to make all my screen capture videos for my online training series (check out my social networking training videos). It is as close to free as humanly possible ($15 a year) for the pro version that makes excellent screen capture videos that you can post on your blog, put up on YouTube and use for many other marketing opportunities.

Again, you are establishing yourself as an expert in your industry, leaving more breadcrumbs around the internet to draw people back to your website (we call those linkbacks or incoming links) and generally providing great information for your clients and prospects.

Here is the link to a totally free ebook on how to get people to attend your event. Whether you are holding a seminar, workshop, party, open house or anything else, you will find some gems here to help get people in the door! I cover using meetup.com, facebook, linkedin, email marketing and some other really great ways to get your message out.

Well, I moved to the Denver area 2 months ago and I was having my first big event (my internet mastermind in Denver) and wanted people to come. I also wanted people to sign up to say they would come to the event, even if they never showed – WHY!?!??! Because people like to go to things that other people are doing – genius I know…:) So anyways, I was in the process of writing a Ebook on how to get people to come to your events and I thought to myself, “how can I get people to sign up even if they aren’t coming?” Then cam a flash of brilliance – bribe them!!!

So, long story short, (too late I know), I am giving this book away, no questions asked, no email required, share it with anyone you want (Seth Godin would be SO proud!). If you like, please comment. If you hate it, don’t bother to complain, it is free…:)

Happy speaking…Tara

PS – I had 10 people who were very interested in internet marketing show up (thanks guys!!), two people who called to say that would have come but heard about it too late, one person on facebook who said the same thing and all the people at the mastermind said they would share the goodness with their friends andÂ colleagues. Can’t ask for any more than that!!!

There are SO many free tools on the internet to get your marketing message out – Eyejot is a winner! One of my absolute favorite marketers – Brian P. Forrester of Mortgage Communication Spot sends out an eyejot most Mondays to tell his sphere important information about the mortgage industry. It takes him less than a minute to record and he reaches many realtors and home buyers with his message!

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If you want to get great updates from Brian, email him to get on his eyejot list…:)

What a time we live in! Marketing is free, I am SO happy about that and so confused that more businesses are not leveraging these channels.

Some history…in 1999 I worked at Digital Chainsaw, an internet company, where we built websites for small businesses. Many of these companies had no online presence and were trying to be early adopters. The cost to do the blueprint for the site (NOTHING was built) was $1,000 and the cost of building the site was from $20,000-$40,000. Now don’t get me wrong, there are still some businesses that have to have professionally built websites with big back-end programming, but most small businesses do not. The last thing about that time to tell you, it was deep in the heart of the tech boom and small business start-up money was flowing freely!

Fast forward 10 years to a new business start-up (if you are not doing marketing you are a start-up no matter how old your company is). I talk to more and more small business owners that do not have ANY resources for marketing. And THAT IS OKAY! I can’t even believe I can say that but it is true.

Today we are going to talk about FREE MARKETING! Upcoming posts will talk about low cost marketing and then big money marketingÂ – which still will not come close to the $20,000 that used to be the norm!

FREE MARKETING IDEAS!

Blogs – today you can have a blog set up in minutes for free! I suggest starting with www.wordpress.com but www.blogger.com works and is my geeky husband’s favorite. You can add widgets, customize the blog with your logo and get your marketing message out there! The drawback, for me, on free blogs is that it is hard to put contact forms on free blogs which will be part of our moderate pricing marketing. If you want to skip the free blog and go to the medium priced blog. I recommend a self-hosted wordpress blog for as low as $500!

Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn – These social media sites allow you to put up a profile, communicate with your customers and friends, post links to your blog posts and set up FREE event notifications. They allow you to build a community around your brand and I can’t tell you how many referrals I have businesses get while watching my “friends”. If you would like to find out more, check out our social networking video series (not free but VERY affordable!)

FREE Websites – www.wetpaint.com, www.squidoo.com and other sites will allow you to put a free page on the subject of your choice. When I was a realtor in Dunedin Florida a few years ago I put up this page, years later it is still there AND if you do a search on Squidoo for Dunedin real estate, my page is the only page. Do a search for Dunedin screen printing and NOTHING comes up, same for Dunedin Lawyer, Accountant, and cleaning. Imagine if you had the Tampa Bay area sewn up for your local business? What would that do for your bottom line? AND google LOVES these sites!

So these are my three best FREE marketing ideas. They cost you nothing but time and provide BIG results! If you have some other free ideas let me know in the comments…:)

How do you keep up with all your social networking and blogging? I use Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, digg, Plaxo, Thrive Contact System, Marketing Artfully and Active Rain often. It drives TONS of traffic to my websites, adding more people to my email database which means more people to talk to about my services and speaking gigs!

Here are some of the easy things I do to make all of that a little easier – commonly known as a system!

SOCIAL NETWORKING
It is VERY fun to watch what your friends and business associates are doing and finding new information on social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo and Twitter and I check most of these once or twice a day. BUT if you are using these to lead generate for your business it is also important to be “on purpose” when you are using these sites. Here are some do’s and do not’s that I follow:

DO – Make sure to post links to your blog posts (see below)

DO – Update your status with new products and services that you are offering

DO – Make comments on your friends’ and business partners’ status

DON’T – Spam them with self-serving updates multiple times a day (putting links to great information is NOT spamming, posting every one of your products or listings over and over is)

DON’T – Put ANYTHING on there that you would not want your best customer to see – the internet never forgets!

BLOGGING
My goal is to blog on one of each of these everyday. I am not always successful BUT the goal is there and I generally get an email everyday that some kind of lead – either for a marketing consult, a referral to one of my business partners or just someone who wants more information about a service I offer. A lead a day is 365 over the course of the year and helps to feed my pipeline!

Marketing Artfully – My main site and the one that I spend the most time on. It has all my product offerings, my shopping cart and is where I send the most people. WHAT I DO: When I write a post here I then add it as a link on Facebook, I often write a mini-post over on Active Rain to drive people back here to read the full post, sometimes I digg it and it automatically goes to Twitter and from there to Plaxo.

Thrive Contact System – This is one of our products and I post info on Database Marketing, Systems and (surprisingly enough) client contacts. I am not as vigilant about this one as I should be BUT it still gets some good organic search traffic and is on the list. WHAT I DO: When I write a post there I then add it as a link on Facebook, sometimes I digg it and it automatically goes to Twitter and from there to Plaxo.

Taradactyl on Active Rain – This one sends LOTS of people my way. It is full of Realtors, Mortgage Pros and Title people (one of my target markets) and I should be WAY more aggressive about posting there! WHAT I DO: Because it is a feeder for my Marketing Artfully blog I don’t tend to do more than write a post BUT it does automatically feed to Twitter and from there to Plaxo.

Hopefully this will help you get your arms around all this work and you can see that it does not have to be overwhelming AND can help generate more business for your business!

Small business speaker and trainer Tara Jacobsen is teaching Market like a Maniac for Realtors in the Largo market center of Keller Williams Realty, December 22 2008 from 11-2. This class is designed to help realtors with an overview of things they can do to increase their business through marketing techniques and tips! Keller Williams is located atÂ 2401 West Bay Dr #603Â Largo, FL 33770. Call Tara to confirm at 727-415-9165.

Your training sessions today were so terrific – like I said that is the 1st time I’ve been at a seminar or training session that I didn’t put on my sunglasses even once (to take a quick snooze)!!!!! Also, I’d like to thank you for the personal help you gave me afterwards – that meant so much to me because it would have taken me forever to figure out what you did so quickly & effortlessly!!!!! You’re quite a gal & I feel very fortunate to have met you!! Keep up the GOOD WORK!!!!! Helen L. Maday REALTOR

Postlets.com offers a great mini posting that you can put into your blog, your Active Rain Blog or on Craigs List. This tutorial will go over how to add a postlet to your wordpress blog.Â If you need help on how to make a postlet, please visit our How To Make A Postlet page.

If you would like step-by-step instructions for how to add a postlet to your wordpress blog, they follow the videos.

This first video will show you how to do a basic postlet!

Wordpress screenshop

Advanced Postlets in wordpress – if you would like to know how customize your postlet for wordpress and are not afraid to delve into the HTML code a bit, this tutorial is for you!

(please be patient – it is a large file)

Wordpress screenshop

Step by step Guide To Adding a Postlet To Your WordPress Blog:

Log into your wordpress

Write>New post

Title>Add your title

Open aÂ new browser and log into your postlet account

Go to my postlets

Select your listing and choose>post

Pick the size you would like to have in your post (if you have a big content area use the default code, if you have a smaller content hole then double click on the medium until the entire box is highlighted0

Right click to copy

Go back to your wordpress post

Click the HTML tab (beside the visual tab)

Paste your postlets code

Hit save

Preview your post

Hit Publish

Tip – Make sure to put some words in your post so that the seach engines see something besides just HTML code!

So I have been making active rain blogs for some of my clients lately and they are VERY excited about using the service BUT they don’t know how to get their listings on there. Well that is super simple using postlets.com, a free website that makes pretty html postings for your listings.

If you have graduated and are ready to start posting your listings on Active Rain, click the image below for step by step instructions! (please be patient on the download, it is a pretty big file BUT it is worth the wait!)

It is SO much fun to learn how to do something – but sometimes it is nicer to have a place to start from! These Ebooks will help realtors and small business owners get a jump start on how to do grow and develop their business!

Â

Â

How To Hold A Great Open HouseÂ Â Â

Find out how to hold a great open house! This ebook will show you the tips and tricks that I learned over the years by doing 2 open houses, week in and week out, 52 weeks a year! Learn how to set yourself up for success, doing a brokers open house and how to schedule specialty open houses to ensure the most traffic!Price $4.97

It is really hard to figure out how to get exposure for your listings. You can put them on one of the hundreds of sites that will send your listing out to any number of other sites BUT it takes forever to load your listing onto all of those sites. Enter www.Postlets.com!. This site will build a great little HTML template that you can cut and paste into many different sites. One entry – multiple sites, what is not to love about that?

The sites that I have found to be the most beneficial for generating interest in my listings are craigslist.com for local traffic and open houses, and activerain.com for getting access to other realtors. Here is a basic tutorial for how to add your listing to postlets (stay tuned for future episodes where I will show you how to add your postlet to craigslist and activerain.com.

Disclosure. I am so glad you are here! Unless otherwise noted, all graphics, posts and handouts are property of Tara L. Jacobsen, PA (Marketing Artfully). When sharing something you found on my site, please include proper credit and a link back to this site. I believe in recommending products that I truly believe will help your business. You can trust that I only accept sponsors who I think will be of benefit to you. Any sponsored post or giveaways will be clearly noted. "Watch for" links are sometimes affiliate links and sometimes not. I do occasionally accept review copies or gifted items and when so will disclose this in my reviews. Privacy Policy